"The penalty good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." - Plato

Saturday, February 09, 2013

Suddenly, Obama Discovers Bush Mental Health Proposals

In 2007, the Democrat congress ignored Bush's proposals. Obama picks them out of the waste bin and calls them his own.

Some of the measures proposed by President Obama following December’s
Newtown massacre bear a striking resemblance to recommendations made
after the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting spree, a bipartisan group of House
lawmakers said Thursday.

The group of six members of the Energy
and Commerce Committee wants to know what became of the George W.
Bush-era proposals to better identify and treat people with mental
health problems.

“Despite evidence that prevention and treatment services can be
effective, fewer than 40 percent of Americans experiencing mental
illness receive treatment in a given year,” the group wrote in a letter
sent Thursday to Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen
Sebelius.

Following Seung-Hui Cho’s rampage at Virginia Tech,
which left 32 people dead, Bush directed HHS and the Justice Department
to issue recommendations for steps the federal government could take to
prevent a repeat of the tragedy.

“Some of the recommendations
made in the Report following Virginia Tech appear to be similar to
proposals that were presented by the President on January 16, 2013,
after the Newtown tragedy, to address concerns about access to mental
health treatment,” the lawmakers wrote.

They submitted a list of
11 2007 recommendations that dealt with mental health issues and asked
Sebelius to provide status updates on each by Feb. 21.

About Me

I was born in Tombstone, Arizona, but moved to California in 1959 when labor strikes at the copper mines devastated the Arizona economy. I've been moving north ever since. Pullman is as far north as I care to live and I'm looking toward reversing the drift.